YPS 10th Year Anniversary Statement: The Youth, Peace and Security Agenda as a Decolonial Tool for Transformative Change
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) Agenda, a landmark framework that has finally recognized the active role of young people in peace processes and conflict resolution. It was a historic achievement for youth inclusion in the peace and security field. Yet, a decade after the adoption of the first resolution, we continue to ask: how much progress have we truly made? In a world scarred by persistent conflict, inequality, and an international system that calls for change but refuses to listen, where demands for transformation echo unheard and unacted upon, the journey of the YPS Agenda has been meaningful.
However, it is far from complete.
While the agenda has challenged traditional power structures by including youth in peacebuilding, its implementation has too often reproduced the very systems it sought to transform. As we reflect on this milestone, Youth Transforming Narratives (YTN) invites a critical conversation on two main questions: How can we decolonize the YPS Agenda for the next decade? How can we move beyond rhetoric to truly challenge and transform the narratives that shape peacebuilding today?
The next ten years must not be about sustaining the status quo, but about reclaiming the Agenda as a tool for justice, equity, and systemic change led by youth themselves. In this spirit, we invite reflection on each of the five pillars of the YPS Agenda, which have been at the center of YTN’s discussions and workshops this year, exploring how they can serve as true tools for transformation in a world that has already changed.
As we look ahead, the challenge is clear, to make the next decade of YPS not just about recognition, but about redefinition.
When we look at Pillar 1 - Participation, Resolution 2250 uses powerful language about how States should enhance youth participation in decision-making forums, even within the Security Council itself. Yet, when we turn to reality, we often find tokenistic activities, lacking real meaning or impact. Young people are invited to the room merely to fill a quota, without truly being heard. For the next decade, meaningful participation must become a priority. We must dismantle the persistent silencing of youth voices, especially those from the Global Majority Countries, who often cannot even access these spaces due to something as simple, yet deeply symbolic, as a denied visa. It may seem like a minor issue, but it reveals the broken and unequal system we live in. True participation is not just about offering youth a seat at the table, it’s about sharing the table, questioning who built it, and for whom it was designed. Decolonizing participation means dismantling hierarchies that silence young people from the Global Majority Countries, rural areas, and marginalized identities.The next decade must go beyond representation and move toward a redistribution of power, where intergenerational co-leadership, youth-led research, and community-based action drive systemic change.
When we look at Pillar 2 - Protection, Resolution 2250 reminds all parties to conflict, and States themselves, of their legal and moral obligations under international law to protect civilians, including youth. Yet, ten years later, we must ask: are young people truly being protected, or merely mentioned in legal texts? What we have witnessed in the past two years, namely with the genocides in Global Majority countries, protection of youth is not even considered. While the Resolution anchors protection in international norms, the lived reality of many youth remains marked by impunity, selectivity, displacement, and the constant threat of violence. Protection has too often been interpreted as control, surveillance, or exclusion, rather than as the freedom to live, speak, and participate safely. A decolonial approach to protection means shifting from a top-down vision of security to one grounded in community care, justice, and accountability. It requires questioning whose safety is prioritized, whose risks are normalized, and whose protection is neglected. For the next decade, we must move beyond protection as a legal obligation and toward protection as meaningful support , ensuring that youth are not only safeguarded from harm, but equipped to challenge and transform the systems that perpetuate it.
Pillar 3 - Prevention reminds us that peace does not begin after violence; it begins where justice takes root. Resolution 2250 calls on Member States to create inclusive and enabling environments where youth from all backgrounds are recognized, supported, and empowered to lead violence prevention and social cohesion initiatives. It highlights the importance of education, employment, and civic engagement as the foundations for sustainable peace. However, despite a decade of commitments, prevention remains underfunded, undervalued, and often misunderstood, treated as a peripheral project rather than a systemic priority. True prevention cannot be reduced to security measures; it must address the structural roots of violence: inequality, exclusion, and the erasure of local knowledge. A decolonial vision of prevention invites us to look beyond institutional frameworks and toward the everyday practices of peace that young people already cultivate, through education, culture, community care, and collective memory. These are not “soft” strategies, but acts of resistance and transformation. The next decade of YPS must reimagine prevention as justice in motion, proactive, rooted in dignity, and shaped by youth-led, community-grounded action.
Pillar 4 - Partnerships, recognizes that peace cannot be built in isolation. However, partnerships have too often been understood as transactions rather than transformations, shaped by short-term projects, rigid hierarchies, and unequal power relations between donors and youth organizations. To fulfill the promise of this pillar, we must move beyond the logic of funding cycles and toward a logic of shared purpose, co-creation, and solidarity. A decolonial approach to partnerships requires reimagining cooperation as shared ownership, where youth are not implementers but co-authors of peace. It means building relationships that value trust over visibility, mutual learning over control, and sustainability over symbolism. So, for the next decade, partnerships must evolve from institutional alliances to collective movements, spaces where communities, governments, and youth co-lead peacebuilding grounded in justice and empathy.
The last pillar, Pillar 5 - Disengagement and Reintegration, urges all actors involved in peacebuilding to consider the specific needs and aspirations of youth affected by armed conflict. Resolution 2250 calls for approaches that promote education, employment, and social reintegration, recognizing that young people’s resilience and potential are essential to a long lasting and sustainable peace. Yet, reintegration efforts too often focus on control instead of care, treating youth as risks to be managed rather than leaders to be supported. Disarmament and reintegration cannot be limited to economic reinsertion or vocational training, they must be processes of healing, belonging, and restoration. A decolonial vision of reintegration reframes these processes around dignity, agency, and collective responsibility. It calls for trauma-informed, youth-led initiatives that connect livelihoods, education, and mental health, not as separate programs, but as interdependent and interconnected dimensions of peace. Looking ahead to the next decade, we must invest in reintegration that restores hope, not just order; that rebuilds communities, not just structures. Because peace is not about returning to what was, it’s about creating what can be.
The YPS Agenda was born from a demand for transformation, not decoration. Yet, a decade later, it risks becoming another framework absorbed by the very system it sought to disrupt. The promise of youth inclusion has too often been translated into symbolic gestures, performative inclusion, and tokenistic participation, while structural inequalities, colonial hierarchies, and epistemic silencing persist beneath the surface of peacebuilding discourse. To reclaim the next decade, we must move from commemoration to confrontation: confronting the ways in which global peace and security continue to privilege some voices while marginalizing others. A decolonized YPS Agenda demands more than institutional reforms; it requires an ethical and political reorientation that centers youth as producers of knowledge, leaders of change, and custodians of memory.
Each pillar offers a pathway, but only if we dare to reinterpret them radically. Participation must dismantle power; protection must ensure freedom; prevention must pursue justice; partnerships must be grounded in solidarity; and reintegration must restore dignity. The true legacy of the next decade will not be measured by the number of youth engaged, but by the systems we are willing to unlearn, the narratives we are brave enough to rewrite, and the futures we choose to build together.